John Kerry’s teachable year

John Kerry has gotten his very own teachable moment. Of course, that moment has been an utter waste of, well, all the time he’s been Secretary of State. The U.S. is stepping back from trying to get the Palestinians to talk peace, because John Kerry has discovered that it’s impossible to have peace when at least one of the partners isn’t interested in actually achieving it. Of course, he blames Israel as much as the Palestinians. But let us review. Israel freed over a hundred convicted terrorists, including murderers. Israel froze settlement building for nine months. Israel has continuously come to the talks with the idea of compromising. In the meantime, Abbas has refused every single chance at compromise, insisted that Israel must retreat to the 1949 Armistice lines, release all Palestinians in Israeli jails, and allow Palestinian refugees to overwhelm Israel in any agreement. Oh, and since Israel refused to release the last group of murderers without a Palestinian promise to continue talking past the end of April, Abbas signed papers to get the PA into 15 UN organizations in yet another move to make an end run around talks to establish a Palestinian state.

John Kerry, and I presume Barack Obama, have finally learned what every president since Jimmy Carter has learned: The Palestinian leadership does not want peace. It wants all of Israel. And Kerry offered the worst deal ever: Jonathan Pollard goes free if Israel releases more terrorist murderers. How unprecedented is that, to offer to release an American prisoner in exchange for Palestinian prisoners? It just begs to encourage the Taliban to demand prisoners from the U.S. in exchange for our captive soldier.

Well, the peace talks are dead. I knew they wouldn’t succeed. You can’t have peace when only one side wants it.

The Catmage Chronicles

It's been hundreds of years since the Darkness last surfaced, a grim time when both humans and Catmages lost their lives. But now the Wild Ones work with humans again, and thirteen-year-old Andy Cohen gets the surprise of his life when a talking cat shows up in his front yard. Goldeneyes, a powerful Catmage, needs Andy’s help. In the exciting first installment of this new series, Meryl Yourish takes the reader into a world of magical cats, dark powers, and a boy who finds himself entangled in their war.